Berba
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Berba (Berba Translations SL) was a Bilbao-based AI startup founded in September 2019 by Thomas Trincado, Diego Andrés, Marguerite Halley and Beñat Espiña. It offered professional translation services '100% human, supported by artificial intelligence': a web platform with a client portal (online quotes and payments, order tracking), a translator portal and a database of nearly 5,000 native translators in more than 60 languages. Its AI matched the best native translator to each project, detected previously translated fragments to suggest to translators, flagged possible errors for peer review, and enabled collaborative translation of long documents. It raised €250,000 in 2020 and a €1 million second round from CDTI, ENISA and Mondragón's venture fund (with Mondragon Lingua), counting clients such as the NBA, Campofrío, Estrella Galicia and Swarovski. Despite the AI, the company entered liquidation in 2024 and was extinguished in December 2024.
02 / Berba FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors supported by the current evidence
Gananzia (29 June 2024) reports Berba Translations entered liquidation; its promoters said the AI technology they were developing was not delivering results.
Promoters told Gananzia the human-in-the-loop AI technology they were developing was not producing results.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Liquidation
BORME (Vizcaya, 13 June 2024, entry 267677) records a 6 May 2024 order of Juzgado de lo Mercantil nº 1 de Bilbao declaring voluntary insolvency (concurso 107/2024, micro-enterprise special procedure) and opening liquidation of BERBA TRANSLATIONS SOCIEDAD LIMITADA EN LIQUIDACION (H BI 74005).
- Liquidation
BORME 24 December 2024 (entry 559376) records a 5 November 2024 final order concluding the concurso and ending liquidation, with extinction inscribed 16 December 2024.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
AI alone is not a moat: as the Basque press noted, developing 'inteligencia artificial' did not guarantee success.
- 02
A €1M round buys limited runway: raising a million just a year before liquidation shows how fast a people-heavy marketplace burns cash.
- 03
Enterprise clients are not traction insurance: names like the NBA and Swarovski did not save the unit economics.
- 04
Watch working-capital timing: voluntary bankruptcy in May 2024 followed a 2022-2023 round of board changes and capital increases - the signals were there.